


don't break it

by AStrangeDaze (TerraRising)



Series: spaces between the universe [4]
Category: I.O.I (Band), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Implied/Referenced Human Experimentation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerraRising/pseuds/AStrangeDaze
Summary: Five years. Everything is different but the same.(Recommended to start from part 1 of the series to avoid confusion)





	don't break it

Seongwoo almost brings them back to his apartment but then thinks better of it, unsure how much the task force would have uncovered about his involvement and whereabouts by now. Instead he takes Daniel to one of his old haunts - new haunt?

 

He shook his head, everything was still jumbled in his head, a mess, five years of having the rest of your life locked away does not make for a smooth amalgamation of memories. Digging out the key hidden on the top of a doorframe, Seongwoo lets Daniel inside the tiny soundproofed room with its worn drum set in the corner.

 

“You play?” Daniel asks, running his hand over the cymbals curiously; he’s stopped sobbing now and for that Seongwoo is glad.

 

“I did,” Seongwoo admits ruefully, “Helped with rehabilitation, coordination of the limbs, you know? They told me I’d played before but well-”

 

He shrugs helplessly, unsure of how to explain how disconcerting it feels for him right now, how _wrong_ everything feels when there’s several sets of memories contradicting each other. There’s the before, the ‘past’ that someone had built for him out of thin air to fill in every gap, and the five years he had lived and _believed_ in those stories. Even now when he looks at Daniel, he can’t help but see the image of Euigeon with his soft brown hair, his intense and nervous stare, overlapping with the Daniel he knows as intimately as the back of his own hand.

 

But maybe even that isn’t true, he sits down heavily on the ground, forgoing the one chair in the room Daniel had left empty for him. This is Daniel with five years of history Seongwoo doesn’t know as well, five years that Seongwoo had chosen to give up.

 

“So, what are you doing back in town?” Seongwoo asks, skirting around the harder questions for now, “Protocol would have you staying far away.”

 

“S&R,” Daniel says, face solemn and Seongwoo sits up straighter, eyes sharp.

 

“Who?” he demands.

 

“The twins,” is Daniel’s reply and Seongwoo makes a pained sound in the back of his throat before he can help it.

 

“How long? And why you?”

 

It’s so easy to fall back into their old roles, not to think of everything that’s changed. It’s a familiar rhythm and if Seongwoo can push everything back, he can grasp it and delude himself into thinking things could be just like before.

 

“Almost five months now and I,” Daniel swallows hard, looking up at Seongwoo with guilt swimming in his eyes, “I wanted to come. I fought them on it, I wanted to be the one to come if there was even the slightest chance that….”

 

He doesn’t say it but he doesn’t have to. Seongwoo knows, he knows Daniel came looking for him.

 

He latches onto the other piece of information instead, letting the fury settle under his veins, “They’ve had the twins for five months? And I trust you’ve found out where they are being held?”

 

Daniel nods even though it looks like he’s physically biting down on his tongue to avoid asking the questions he wants badly to know the answers to. “The Penthouse,” and Seongwoo hisses at that accursed name, shooting to his feet.

 

“And the others?” he demands, pacing the room in agitation, “You can’t extract them alone, your skillset isn’t even made for extraction - _dammit Daniel_ , _why did you come here?_ ”

 

The wounded look on Daniel’s face does nothing to soothe his temper, not when Seongwoo’s last memory of the twins were of two pre-pubescent puppies with perpetually scrapped knees and wide grins nipping at his heels, following everyone and anyone around and demanding questions to answers or participants in their pranks. He doesn’t want to think about what a five month stay at the Penthouse could have done to them, not when he knows intimately what it feels like to be under that particular blade.

 

Even now he can’t help but shudder, memories fluttering forward and flipping through his mind like pages of a book he knows too well. Remembers walls so white that he hates the colour even now. Recalls the taste of antiseptic in the air, of being strapped and pinned down like nothing more than an insect under a microscope, a specimen to be cut open until they figured out what made him tick. Just another carcass to be thrown out once he outlived his use.

 

He remembers bleeding, the touch of cold metal against the lobes of his brain, remembers being held down as he screams and screams and _screams an-_

 

“Seongwoo!”

 

His head whips up to stare at Daniel, still but startled, he has forgotten he needs to breath at all. All around him, objects are suspended in the air and he winces, reeling his power back in slowly until everything is deposited back on solid ground. “Sorry,” he bites out, cheeks flaming at the gross lapse in control.

 

“Hyung,” Daniel’s tone is gentle, the kind you use to coax feral animals out from corners and Seongwoo almost bristles on principle alone, “What happened to you?”

 

“Does it matter?” Seongwoo deflects, “We need to get the twins out as quickly as possible. Who else can we count on?”

 

“Hyung.”

 

“Not now, Daniel.”

 

“If it’s not now, it’ll be never,” Daniel insists stubbornly, “Please, hyung, you can’t go into the field like this. At the very least I need to know what triggers to look out for-”

 

Seongwoo cuts him off unintentionally, hysterical laughter bubbling out of his throat that stops Daniel short, leaving him to stare at Seongwoo with wide eyes.

 

“Forget about the triggers, Niel,” Seongwoo hisses between his teeth, biting back another round of inappropriate laughter, “What matters now is the extraction okay, I need details.”

 

“Hyung, it’s not safe for you to rush in like this, not when you’re still recovering-”

 

“ _I am not leaving them there for a second longer than absolutely necessary, Kang Daniel_!” Seongwoo’s voice sounds shrill even to him and he’s never been more glad that the rooms here were sound-proofed.

 

“Hyung-”

 

“Stop _calling_ me that,” he spits out, “Stop calling me that in that voice! I won’t have them there, I _won’t_! This is non-negotiable.”

 

“Seongwoo, just talking about that place is-”

 

“You want to know the triggers, Daniel? Everything there is a trigger. **Everything** ,” the words come out all in a rush, harsh in a way he never meant to direct at Daniel of all people, “Just hearing the name of it, I can’t- none of you understand what it’s like there. None of you! And I hope that you never do.”

 

Daniel inches forward until he can take Seongwoo’s hand between his own, cradling it gently, pressing a kiss to his palm and Seongwoo hadn’t even noticed until now how cold he had gotten, or how hard he was shaking. Daniel’s hands are firebrands on his skin, an inferno that threatens to consume him and he whines, low in his throat, truly nothing more than a wounded animal now and Daniel doesn’t hesitate to pull Seongwoo closer, to wrap his arms around him and hold him tight.

 

His senses feel scrubbed raw and for a moment he almost wishes he had never regained his memories or access to his powers. That he was still just Ong Seongwoo, auditor, bachelor with questionable cooking skills but who made _great_ kimchi jjigae, best friend to a goofy girl with an unhealthy addiction to heels taller than she could safely walk in. How tempting it would be to just slip back into that life, to go back to a normal, mundane existence, free of trauma and burdens heavier than any mortal should be asked to carry.

 

Even if it meant leaving Daniel behind, even if it meant leaving everything else behind and choosing monotony, wasn’t it worth it? Hadn’t he already done it, in a sense, abandoned them all for five years?

 

“Hyung, what happened to you there?”

 

Seongwoo opens his mouth to brush it off, to redirect the line of conversation, to lie lie lie until it all goes away, but he makes the mistake of looking Daniel in the eye and the truth tumbles out of his lips instead.

 

“Nothing,” he croaks, “Everything. They wanted to see how I worked, what makes me tick. They took me apart and put me back together in every possible way.”

 

He rips his sleeve back, baring his arm to Daniel, the silvery scars carved by precise surgical knives, the dotted lines along which scapels have cut into and then pealed back skin, only to piece it back together again. “Everything,” he repeats, licking suddenly dry lips with a tongue what felt like sandpaper.

 

Daniel is silent for what feels like an eternity, an eternity during which Seongwo struggles to wrestle away the memories of pain and a quiet yearning for everything to end. “We’ll get them out,” Daniel says finally and Seongwoo’s hand spasms in his hold even as he nods decisively, “We’ll get them out.”

 

* * *

 

 

It’s an ill-contrived plan at best that they’re armed with, and no one is more aware of this than Seongwoo as he’s crouched inside the vents of the Penthouse.

 

Daniel is hidden somewhere in a storage closet waiting for Seongwoo’s signal because he doesn’t fit into the vents with his stupidly broad shoulders, and Seongwoo almost giggles to himself admist all this tension, remembering the good old days when they had just started training and Daniel failed every infiltration mission because he kept getting stuck everywhere. There was nothing subtle about a giant hunk of overpowered man trying to jam himself into corners or having to bodily _rip_ his way through metal when he gets stuck in vents.

 

Seongwoo remembers how they all laughed themselves sick the first time Daniel had panicked during a simulation, hidden inside a filing cabinet and then, in a moment of overeagerness, jumped out to confront the ‘enemy’ scout practically wearing the cabinet door. Their instructor had shaken his head and added a clear note to Daniel’s file that he was never to be tapped for missions requiring infiltration unless strictly necessary.

 

It’s a sobering moment for Seongwoo as he disables more sensors and continues along his search for the the twins to remember that he doesn’t have his usual back-up and he’s rusty as hell right now with his powers, making his progress slow as he works carefully not to give his presence away. What he wouldn’t give to have Minhyun and Jonghyun with him right now because being able to phase through walls and contact the twins directly would make all of this so much easier.

 

It seems like an eternity of being frozen in cramps spaces and near-misses before he looks down through the grate and sees Jihoon curled up on a cramped cot and his heart aches as how _small_ he looks. He swallows and hopes to hell that the cells still don’t have audio surveillance installed and then reaches out with his mind to give the blankets wrapped around Jihoon a tiny tug.

 

Instantly the boy freezes, alert, eyes darting around.

 

“Jihoon-ah,” he calls softly, praying that the other remembers him, “Don’t look up. Just pretend you’re resting still.”

 

There’s a small imperceptible twitch of his right shoulder that Seongwoo only caught because he was looking for it and he breathes a sigh of relief; Jihoon still remembered their old signals, good, that was good.

 

“If I break you out, can you move?”

 

Right again. Okay.

 

“Are you injured? Any suppressors on you right now?”

 

The muscle in his left shoulder jumps twice and Seongwoo thanks the gods for small mercies in that moment.

 

“Do you know where your brother is?”

 

A pause and then Jihoon’s right arm extends casually towards the head of the bed, tapping against two of the metal bars of the bed frame.

 

“Thank you, I’m going to go check on your brother. Get ready to move Jihoon, we’re getting you out of here.”

 

Seongwoo waits for a confirmation before travelling in the direction Jihoon had pointed out, stopping two rooms over to find Woojin as promised but, he freezes, sucking in a breath that was perhaps just a little too loud because Woojin pauses, ears twitching. There is another boy in the room with him, long limbed and facial features still a little slack as if he was fighting off the last tail ends of anesthesia but looking unbearably young. _Children_ , _they were doing this to children now._

 

Focusing on the task at hand, Seongwoo tugs on the hem of Woojin’s shirt gets his attention, though the boy instantly turns to fuss over his companion to mask his movement.

 

“Woojin-ah, can you hear me?” he whispers through the grate.

 

Bending over and pretending to speak with his companion, Woojin answers him with a heartbreakingly desperate voice, “Seongwoo hyung? Is it really you?”

 

“Yes,” he chokes back his own emotions, glad that Woojin still remembered who he was and recognized his voice, “We’re going to get you out of here. Are you okay to move?”

 

“Yes, I’m fine. They gave me something a few hours ago though, I don’t know if I can shift.”

 

“That’s fine, as long as you can move. What about your friend there?”

 

“I think the drug is wearing off but, I’m not- We can’t leave him.”

 

“We won’t leave him,” Seongwoo soothes instantly though he curses inwardly, he was going to need to get Daniel in here with him then, “But you and Jihoonie might have to carry him.”

 

“We can do that,” Woojin promises, jaw set stubbornly as he runs a shaking hand through the unknown boy’s hair, “Hyung he’s so _young_.”

 

 _So are you,_ Seongwoo wants to scream, _so are you._ Instead he takes a deep breath and forces his mind to start coming up with a plan, pulls on every vestige of his trainingso that he can get them out of this. He’s got an advantage - as much as he hates it, he knows this place. The layout hasn’t changed, the security is the same routine schedule; it was sloppy, they had gotten lazy because no one had ever successfully broken in to the facility, but Seongwoo has learned to always be grateful to your enemy’s foolishness.

 

“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Seongwoo instructs, mentally locating the nearest exit point, “When I override the door, I need you to grab your friend and run to Jihoon’s room, okay? We’ll head to the north end of the floor, we’re going to have to fight out way out. I need you to stay strong for me for just a little while longer, okay?”

 

“Okay hyung,” Woojin sounds like he’s choking back tears and Seongwoo nods even though the boy can’t see it.

 

“You’re getting out of here, Woojin-ah, it’s going to be fine.”

 

 _It’s going to be fine,_ he repeats to himself even as he makes his way back to where Daniel is hidden _, it has to be. It has to be._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Seongwoo and Daniel had made it to Woojin’s room undetected by some ridiculous luck, but it all ends the moment Seongwoo give Daniel the signal. He reaches into the locking mechanism of Jihoon's door and _twists_ at the same moment Daniel drops out of the ceiling with the subtly of a behemoth and wrenches the door to Woojin’s room out of its frame.

 

Woojin stares at Daniel for one wide-eyed moment before he’s dragging his friend with him through the doorway and sprinting towards Seongwoo and Jihoon, throwing the half-conscious boy’s arm over Jihoon’s shoulder with garbled instructions to ‘watch his fucking head’ and then the five of them are running for their lives.

 

The alarm blares about their head, loud and obnoxious. Seongwoo takes point out of necessity and Daniel brings up the rear with a grim determination that has found a home on his face sometime in the last five years.

 

Seongwoo loses count of how many people he sends flying into walls, how many doors he forces open with his mind alone, how many bullets and tranquillizers he barely manages to halt in time. Behind him Woojin’s one free hand is tipped with claws and bloody, a feral look in his eyes, and Jihoon’s fist is the colour of steel, leaving destruction in his wake. Daniel picks up one of the guards trying to get close and throws them into the reinforcements, forcing them to scatter while the unlucky ones go down like bowling pins.

 

“Just like the good old times,” Daniel jokes to keep the atmosphere light and Seongwoo laughs, high off adrenaline and desperation, even as his lungs burn from exertion.

 

“Your definition of a good time is really shitty, hyung,” Jihoon chirps as he knocks the wind out of another guard and probably breaks at least two of his ribs.

 

Daniel doesn’t have a chance to retort because even more guards with reinforced armour this time are rushing at them, and they’re back to fighting again and dodging bullets while trying not to get in each other’s way. They’re lucky in a sense; the twins are used to fighting side by side, and Seongwoo and Daniel are both experienced enough to work around them and take the brunt of the attacks.

 

They’re almost at the exit when Seongwoo rounds a corner and freezes at the sight of the barrel of a gun pointed towards him with a very familiar face at the other end.

 

“Doyeonie,” he breathes, betrayal tinging every syllable and Daniel snarls behind him, hearing the pain in his voice.

 

“I knew it wouldn’t last,” Doyoen stares at him, shaking her head, hair still set in those fucking perfect curls from the party, “I told them it wasn’t going to work. You can’t trap fire with paper, I could see you burning up slowly, but no one listened. The migraines were just the most obvious sign; with a weaker subject it might have worked, that looping to reinforce their own tampering, but with you? With you it was just a matter of time.”

 

“You were monitoring me.”

 

“Yes,” her lips quirked up, “they wanted to keep an eye on their latest little project.”

 

“Why you?” Seongwoo can’t help but ask even as he knows they have to keep moving, remembering the way Doyeon laughs with wild abandon over stupid variety shows, how she fusses when he’s sick, the way her face scrunches up at the texture of live octopus, trying and failing to see that woman in the impassive face of the agent in front of him.

 

“They thought I was a good fit,” she shrugs in that familiar motion that sends a pang through him, “You needed someone personable you would be comfortable attaching yourself to and they were right, you latched right on to the stability I offered. You know what the funny thing is, though?”

 

“What?” Seongwoo grits out and Doyeon smiles, a little sad as she squeezes the trigger and a shot rings out.

 

A body behind Seongwoo crumbles, heavy armour hitting the ground as he stares. “Relationships are a two-way street,” her tone is sardonic even as she empties her magazine into the guards pursuing Seongwoo, “Get out of here you fool.”

 

The sound of gunfire wrenches Seongwoo out of his daze and he’s back in action, running beside Doyeon as they make a mad dash towards the exit, the agent pausing only to yank on a lever and jam her access card inside, opening all the other containment cells and adding to the chaos of the situation as the prisoners who were mobile made their own desperate bids for freedom. “I wiped your address from the system,” Doyoen tells him in between drop kicking a man twice her size, “There’s a truck parked in the underground there, grab what you need and then leave, don’t look back. Don’t take any of the vehicles here, they’ll track you, you can’t disable the system.”

 

“What about you?” he pants, feeling the familiar build up of pressure behind his eyes that tells him he’s about to reach his limits for the day, “They’ll come after you, they’ll know. Why did you do this for me?”

 

“I told you, relationships are a two-way street, I’m compromised to hell and back. Don’t worry about me, I have my own contacts and way out of this city.”

 

“Come with us,” Seongwoo blurts out as he gathers the last of his strength to shred the mechanism on the last door keeping them from freedom, halting the closing gates in its tracks as they slide underneath, tumbling into the courtyard and then sprinting for the tree line.

 

Some unknown behind them blasts a hole through the electric fence and they take advantage of the opening anyways. “I shouldn’t,” Doyeon stumbles for a moment and Seongwoo is by her side in an instant, pulling her up as they keep running.

 

“Come with us,” he insists, sharing a brief look with Daniel.

 

Hesitation mars her face even as they cut a swath through the undergrowth. Beyond them the sun is rising in the horizon, painting their way with bright red and orange hues. Daniel takes Woojin’s friend from him and hefts him over one shoulder, and they pause for a second to regroup. In the facility below them, people continue to pour out from the gates, fanning out in different directions, all seeking freedom and safety. The building itself is in flames, a bright burning beacon as the staff flounders to try and keep order and recoup their losses.

 

Seongwoo takes Doyeon’s hand and tugs on it imploringly and she looks at him, bottom lip caught between her teeth as she takes in the sunrise reflected in his eyes, the promise of new beginnings, of better things.

 

 

 

“Okay, but we need to pick up one more person on the way.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> No one ever let me write heist-like scenes or fight scenes ever again, oh my god.
> 
> Also there is some abject irony here naming this chapter "don't break it" when they're _breaking in to a building_.


End file.
